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Unified English Braille (UEB)

Many of you will have heard of the UK’s decision to adopt UEB, and of course the urban grist mill is in full flood with all manner of rumours about increased bulk of braille, difficulty in learning, dropping of some contractions, etc., etc..

Moreover, America has also made the decision to adopt UEB for literary braille, meaning that all major countries whose first language is English, will be using the same braille code. This does NOT mean any change in the way we spell words. Americans will still have “color”, and others will have “colour”.

The decision was not made lightly, but was made for many good reasons, not least the change in the written language over the past 20 – 30 years. An obvious example is with e-mail and web addresses where a full stop appears unspaced, and so could be confused for a double d.

And if the cost of producing braille is to be kept down, we must make use of computers, which do not have any degree of intelligence to make anything other than logical decisions, based on a logical set of rules. (That sounds like Mr. Spock speaking!)